Tag Archives: Adventures

Yesterday, I wrote about the term campaign. While I was writing that article, it occurred to me that the term adventure has some shading to its meaning.

For example, some use the term adventure to indicate a single session. Others mean it to indicate a set of a contained story, plot, or location. Sometimes the adventure can be played in a single game session, other times, it might drag on for weeks, if it is the looting of a large replenishing dungeon.

I think commercial modules had a big impact on the use of the word adventure. The module is a self-contained whole, and the DM does not have to do anything beyond become familiar with it. Of course, customization is always an option. A series of adventures, like the Drow series could each be considered a single adventure, or the completion of the entire story arch within could be classed as an adventure.

A series of adventures, whether interrelated or not serve to make up a campaign, whatever one means by campaign.

Like so much of language, a lot of it is dictated by convention, experience, and preference. All of the above uses are correct. I supposed there are those that like to argue the fine points of any use of a word. However, that is an academic exercise that does not interest everyone. The point is to get together and play!

All terms with multiple meanings can confuse new players, so one should work to minimize the jargon, or define it on the go. The key to growing the hobby is helping new players want to play again.

How else have you used or encountered other uses in the RPG context of the term adventure?

Of course, no matter how you use the term adventure, an adventurer is one who has or goes on adventures.

It’s been a long day. Snow and cold last week, followed by warmer temperatures and a lot of rain and a thunderstorm last night. I only new there was a thunderstorm because I had to get up in the middle of the night, I can sleep through most anything once I get to sleep. That was at 3:30 and the power was out.

I got back to sleep.and was sleeping soundly and dreaming, on the edge of lucid dreaming when I swore someone was pounding on my front door, so I stumble downstairs to see who it was. No one. The dogs in their kennels were all excited and wagging their tails into the sides of the kennels making a load of racket. Did my dreaming translate that into pounding on the door? That was at 5:30 and I couldn’t fall back asleep. At 6:30 the power came back on and the streetlight across the street filled my room with light. (I need blackout curtains.)

At 7:00 my alarm went off, so I grudgingly got up and got ready for work and stopped to get massive amounts of caffeine to help me get through the day. At about 9:30 I dozed at my desk for a bit. Thankfully, it was a relatively slow day at work.

We finally got a CostCo in Kalamazoo, within a couple miles of my work, and just off the way home. My son presented me with a membership card, as he got two with his membership. Since he lives with me, we are in the same household. I made the mistake of shopping while I was hungry, but got things that are healthy…or mostly so. I saw what I consider a good deal on a mini desktop with Win7 Pro. My last desktop got zapped and all I could salvage were the peripherals and the hard drive. My laptop has a failed screen and keeps freezing up and having issues with Google+ Hangouts with the weekly AD&D game I’m in. I do some work for a non-profit, so I need a working PC to keep up. I was on the look out for a good buy.

My tired brain came up with a name based on some of the OSR and original modules, and I thought I’d write about that tonight.

The Caves of Cavernous Caverns. Awesome, right?

Or, The Caves of Chaotic Caverns.

The Crumbling Caves of Chaotic Caverns.

The Terrifying Terror of The Terrible Trolls.

What this is calling for is a random adventure/module name generator. I recall having read about something like that a couple years ago, there is probably more than one, but I don’t feel like googling for them right now.

Alliteration add punch to it, like : Red River of Raging Ravenous Revenants. Although a horde of raging revenants would be silly without the proper story and narrative elements, psychobabble and circumlocutious obfuscation….

It’s not a complete set of tables to generate a module/adventure/campaign name, since I didn’t put a die and a roll with each table, just something to get started. This is more a placeholder for me to refine my idea and come up with some sort of finished product or PDF to share at some point in the nebulous future. Ah what fun a tired brain can generate!